Second Fiddle Poem
A beachcomber’s drift
is a writer’s last resort
when you’re ghosted by a poem
you almost wrote
When you lost your pick
swallowed by salt water
when the breakers take you under
and sweep the shore clean
But soon you start again
with a second fiddle poem
the ocean in a shell
listening to itself
A lonely heart’s rebound
that you hope will hold its own
in a second wave
of a daydreamer’s refrain
that doesn’t wash away
______________Colleen Redman / Poets and Storytellers United
September 20th, 2020 1:40 am
Very beautifully expressed! I like to think that sometimes the ‘second fiddle’ poems may be even better than the ones which got washed away might have been … and anyway, we’ll never really know. But, whether first or second wave, I don’t know how this piece could have been bettered.
September 20th, 2020 3:27 am
I love the whole poem, Colleen, but the opening stanza could stand on its own and be perfect.
September 20th, 2020 4:48 am
I love the sense of resilience in this.
September 20th, 2020 5:26 am
Wow! Colleen… What a powerful and beautifully sustained image here. The sound of:
“the ocean in a shell
listening to itself…
A lonely heart’s rebound…
of a daydreamer’s refrain…
It feels so good to be back here reading you again. Bravo!
September 20th, 2020 9:19 am
you would have come back stronger.
September 20th, 2020 11:30 am
Sometimes those second-fiddle poems turn out to be grandiloquent pieces. Not always, but often enough to make the poet not want to throw away much of anything, just in case.
September 20th, 2020 12:44 pm
I suspect, that like Casanunda, World’s 2nd Greatest Lover, second-fiddle poems try harder. So they give it all they have. And that is often so much more than any first could’ve brought.
September 20th, 2020 1:40 pm
Feeling this lately–there’s finite brain space for poems and they need to go down as they come. 🙂 Really enjoyed the descriptive erasures.
September 20th, 2020 6:22 pm
Love your “second fiddle”. Many of mine are much fiddled in that I often write and go back and fine tune any number of times before I consider them complete. Maybe it’s just fiddling around….or engaging in fiddle dee dee…cat and the fiddle …. oh fiddlesticks!
September 21st, 2020 12:04 am
I’ve never read of poems being described as driftwood but that is an interesting thought. Sometimes there is an wandering path to deliver a composition. As you say, second (or third or fourths) fiddles make it.
After including the comments, I’m glad I’m not the only one who rewrites more than once and then once more.
September 21st, 2020 12:19 am
Not wood, just drift.
September 23rd, 2020 4:35 pm
This is all too familiar a scenario for me. Yes, I’ve longed a bit for the poems that got away, but sometimes I find those second poems have a bit more depth and maturity to it that I first expected.
September 24th, 2020 9:04 am
The second wave always lifts you up from being down and out. Loved the way you have expressed, great poem.